How to Use Social Media for SEO

Post Google Panda and Penguin, marketers have been in a tizzy trying to figure out which SEO techniques can still work to push your website higher in the rankings. These last two updates closed many of the loopholes which allowed for keyword stuffing and other such exploitative tools. Now that Google is looking to promote useful content over stuffed content, many marketers are unsure of how to proceed. What are the new rules? Why not try using the content marketing tools that are ranking highly in search engines right now? I’m talking about harnessing the power of social media to perform your SEO functions for you.

Content is King and Social Media Runs on Content

For ages the old saying has been “Content is king and links are queen.” Yet many marketers pursued strategies of back links and keyword stuffing, hoping to drive websites higher in search rankings based on tricks instead of value. In comparison, 92% of marketers today believe content marketing to be a primary driver in the industry, and even as a valuable SEO tool. In a society based upon consumers ingesting information in real time, content marketing strategies make sense. People log on, share, and consume content at rapid speed. Is it any wonder that search results and SEO has gone social?

Social media is based upon the idea of sharing oneself and sharing one’s experiences with the world. People share photos, blogs, articles, videos, music, you name it. And the search engines have caught on. It’s this interesting and valuable content that people want to find when they search the web. Truly a people focused idea, they’ve decided that if 20% of social networking users share content, this is what people find valuable.

As content sharing evolves, search engines have begun to evolve too. Search engines such as Google and Bing are now using social media to index content and evaluate website content for value. Marketers are seeing their social content indexing higher and the amount of referring keywords have grown.

What You Can Do as a Marketer

Marketers are always looking for new strategies and tools to evolve. Keep in mind the following and you should be well on your way to using social media content for SEO:

Social media is driven by content. Social media users are content producers and content consumers, engaging in constant flows of information. The value in one piece of content over another is often arbitrary, but comes down to how informative or entertaining it is deemed to be.

You have to keep at it to see results. You’re not going to reach anyone if you post one blog every two months and link to it on your Facebook. How does that encourage steady streams of traffic to your site? You may be timid at first, but you should boldly put your content out there and keep at it until it sticks.

Content communicates your brand, your values, your vision to your core audience. In contrast to many so called authorities on social media, you don’t need hundreds of mini advertisements buy here buy here every day. Instead, you can take a cue from brands such as Burberry, who often posts photos to its social media that capture the epitome of London style, even if its trademark logos aren’t in the photos. That’s some clever marketing right there!

The goal of SEO should be to support your valuable content and to drive engagement with the brand. The reality is that more people interact in social networks today than anywhere else on the internet so it’s a great place to get noticed and to find the audience you’re seeking. With the millions of subscribers and the huge flows of traffic, social networks boost content higher by virtue of the strength of their network alone. Try these tools to engage more users with your content and drop the spammy SEO techniques once and for all.

Guest Post By: Steve Mehr is CEO and owner of WebShark360, a premiere legal marketing agency. Based out of Irvine, Ca, Steve and his talented team offers attorneys critical marketing tools to gain new business now. As an attorney and an attorney marketer, Steve understands how attorneys market like no other. http://webshark360.com

Recent Posts

Affiliate Disclosure

You should assume that the owner of this website is an affiliate for providers of goods and services mentioned on this website and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. To learn more, click here | Legal